Known prior art is the enclosed U.S. Pat. No. 5,848,928 of Wong which describes finger food tongs (“eating utensils”) with texturized surfaces, but they appear to be permanently attached, not attached manually in situ by adhesive stickers.
Disposable paper based finger food tongs are described in the Jones, U.S. Pat. No. 3,407,927. However, Jones merely discloses folding a sheet of paper or plastic material to form opposite pockets with mid-facing pocket openings, which are not sealed for sanitary use, and then heat sealing or adhesive gluing of the left and right ride edges of each pocketed food holder before being cut into separate food holders. Jones also does not disclose adherable textured regions with free ends to permit pivoting.
Kaufman, U.S. Pat. No. 3,331,626, described finger tongs with open sided, unsealed pockets.
Known prior art also includes a recent pending European patent application number WO 2012/117248 of Ly from the United Kingdom of Great Britain which describes disposable paper finger tongs which are coated and textured for better gripping. However, Ly does not show the use of a central patch of adhesive on a central portion the back of the textured sticker patch to reduce ripping caused by full surface adhesive pulling against thin paper tong material. Ly also has complicated pleats to compress multiple folds to prevent unfolding of the pockets due to the resilient bias of his materials. However, Ly requires an extra long axis of the material to accommodate the folded pleats, as is clearly shown in Ly's FIG. 4, which excessively large areas 8 of adhesive, which are not required in the Applicant's present invention. Ly's fold lines are solely for the folding, not for sealing off Ly's pockets prior to use. Also, Ly's perforations are for scoring the edges of the pocketed handling implements, not for sealing off the finger insertion pockets prior to use.